Mornings in the old year of 2024, I received the daily news on my smart phone.  I loved getting a heads-up before the TV morning news came on with the latest miseries of the day. Some days, however, the news was so horrifying that I wandered around half the morning trying not to think about it.  So, when I learned that in 2023 there were 10.3 million cases of measles world-wide, I was appalled. And worst yet there had been 107,500 deaths.  Measles is not a simple rash that lasts for a couple of weeks, but it may be a lethal virus that can cause blindness and encephalitis.  Victims of measles sometimes end up with brain damage or death. I wondered why these people or children had not been vaccinated against the measles virus.  Then I remembered that there are people all over the world who are afraid of vaccines.  Contemplating that, I was back in the 1940s sitting in my father’s rocking chair recovering from the chicken-pox.

It was spring vacation, and I was home from the first grade.  A little place on my tummy itched, and I asked my mom what the three little blisters were.  She checked and said I had the chicken pox.  I was not sick, but mom would not let me out of the house, and I had to wait two weeks before she pronounced me cured.

Hardly had I been allowed to go outside and then back to school when my younger brother, Wally, came down with the pox.  He nearly died.  The pox covered him from head to foot and many of the pox fused into large, oozing sores.  He ran a high fever, itched all over and stopped eating.  He had not yet gone to school, and when I came home each day wanting to spend the afternoons playing games with him, he was too weak to even stand up.  I knew my mother was terribly worried, and I was anxious watching her coax him to eat a little Jello.  In the end, he was ill for over a month. Had anyone told my mom that chicken-pox was just an ordinary kid’s disease, she would certainly have told them differently.

The next summer Wally and I both had the whooping cough.  We coughed constantly all day and all night, and often followed up the coughing spells by vomiting.  Both of us grew thinner and thinner, and mom tried every trick in the book to build us up.  I clearly remember the cod-liver-oil which my brother and I promptly threw up.  The disease went on and on, and I know that I thought I would never sleep through the night again.  Had anyone offered us a vaccine, we would have jumped on it.

Over the next three years, there were mumps, rubella and finally measles.  We were not terribly sick from mumps, although my brother once again could not eat.  Rubella made my legs ache but the rash was mild.  But the measles was miserable, because we were banished to dark rooms with meals in bed.  Mom knew that the measles virus was dangerous, and she decided that staying in the dark and not reading was the best way to prevent blindness.  I have never been so bored in my whole life.

Then there were the years of the Polio epidemic.  No one knew for sure what was causing the disease to become so prevalent, and as a consequence, we were not allowed to go anywhere during hot weather.  Children who developed polio in our little village were hospitalized, and some never came home.  Others returned with braces on their limbs and some limped forever.  It was a scary, mysterious time.  When our little town was chosen to be part of a large study for the first vaccine, mom had my brother and me first in line for the shot.  The next year, mom allowed us to travel with the school to a nearby lake and learn to swim.  The polio epidemic had finally ended.

When my own children were babies, I was quick to get them vaccinated, and I was thrilled that they did not have to go through the miserable diseases that Wally and I had been subjected to.  When they all grew up and had children of their own, I not only encouraged them, but literally bossed them into getting their offspring vaccinated.  I would describe the misery of those nasty childhood diseases, and consequently all my grandchildren were vaccinated.

Now I cannot discern why so many young parents decide not to have their children vaccinated.  I guess they buy into the propaganda spouted out by ignorant politicians and make the decision to believe what they hear.  My guess is that they and the politicians never went through the childhood sicknesses that Wally and I endured.  Probably they had been vaccinated as children, so they do not know how dangerous a measles virus can be.

I really hope that in the new year, many of them will come to their senses and not be a part of the epidemics that are sure to follow, if kids are not protected with our simple vaccines.